By Kavita Mistry 
Air India chief Campbell Wilson on Wednesday said the pace of liberalisation of bilateral flying rights should not be “too much” that it undercuts the investments by Indian airlines and other aviation players.
India is one of the world’s fastest growing civil aviation markets, and various foreign carriers, especially from the Gulf, have been raising concerns that the country is not providing more bilateral rights as they look to tap the market potential.
The Tata Group-owned Air India is working on revamping and expanding its fleet to offer more services amid rising air traffic demand.
According to Wilson, around 95 per cent of the traffic that Indian airlines carry is terminating or originating in India.
“For some of the other carriers, upwards of 60 per cent, 70 per cent and in some cases 90 per cent of what they are uplifting from India is transiting and going somewhere else.
“And to the extent that Indian carriers have invested tens of billions of dollars in wide-body aircraft to serve these markets directly, those are customers that we’re relying on to fill the aircraft that we’re investing in,” he said at a conference in the national capital.
Wilson asserted that if the pace of liberalisation is too much, it would completely undercut the investment case that “we’re making to buy aircraft”.
“If we can’t enter those aircraft into service, all of the ancillary benefits to MRO, to manufacturing, to tourism, to all of the things that are facilitated by air connectivity start to erode.
“So, I firmly believe that it’s in India’s interests to make sure the pace of liberalisation is such that it doesn’t undercut investments being made by Indian (entities), not just airlines. Indian aviation players to develop India into the thriving, large, world-leading, world-attracting ecosystem that I think all of us want it to be,” the Air India chief said.
Further, Wilson said that India is still in some respects a developing country and is competing against countries that developed much earlier.
“I think it’s prudent that the pace is not dictated by the most developed, and not necessarily by the least developed,” he added.
